


Where is Your Home, Who is Your Home

by soyouwannaplaywithmagick



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 23:57:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5985442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soyouwannaplaywithmagick/pseuds/soyouwannaplaywithmagick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuation of Dark Horse. Thomas the Bat is sick, and why does John have to administer a cure again? Magic AU. Fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where is Your Home, Who is Your Home

**Author's Note:**

> “All your cryin’ don’t do no good  
> Come on up to the house  
> Come down off the cross, we can use the wood  
> You gotta come on up to the house”

John cringed as he stared down into Thomas’ big, red eyes, the same way he always did when he had to look at him, feed him, or generally be in his vicinity. Unfortunately, today was a much worse day, as he was actually holding Thomas is the palm of his hand. He couldn’t believe he was doing it, nor how leathery and strange Thomas’ wings felt against his skin. Brr.

It surprised John immensely the first time the bat coughed, like a baby’s tussive noises. Sherlock had told him that the animal had caught some sort of cold, but John didn’t believe it until he heard the weird hacking sound. As he held Thomas, he hoped he wouldn’t hear it again.

“Really, John, just do it.”

“Why do _I_ have to do it?” John groaned, nearly a five hundred years of time and space and knowledge unrecognizable in the man who now sounded just as disgusted as his seventeen-year-old self had been with anything Thomas-related. “Can’t you just––”

“I’m with Morgana,” Sherlock responded and John glanced back to see the owl perched on the cuff of Sherlock’s shirt, her great, yellow eyes blinking. “I need to make sure that she doesn’t have it too.”

“Can bats and owls even pass… diseases to one another?” John frowned at Thomas’ serene face. The look was interrupted by another sickly cough, and John held the bat away from himself.

“It depends. It’s magick-based, so it could become an issue. But I need to be positive. Anyway, keep holding him. He likes it.”

John groaned. “Oh, for God’s…”

He drew the animal in toward his body again. Staring down at Thomas now, he became wary.

“Can’t I have like an oven mitt or something? In case he decides to get bitey?”

Sherlock just gave an absent smile and clearly had no intention of responding to John. Holding the bat out in his unprotected fingers, he realized he could feel its heart beating inside the warm, tiny body.

“Uck.”

“One moment more,” Sherlock whispered. “I’m going to turn Morgana over to our bedroom and then get the potion we need.”

  
For a moment, John reflected on the way Sherlock said “our bedroom,” a place that had been been only Sherlock’s for a very long time and enshrouded in mystery at that. But it did belong to the two of them now; John truly felt that. In the casual way Sherlock said “ours,” in the fact that his pants sometimes wound up discarded on the floor or ended up stuffed under the desk, in the knowledge that his body had been loved, spent, and reignited over and over again more than he could ever begin to count in that bed. He smiled, but another one of Thomas’ coughs quickly caused the expression to disappear and melt into more disgust.

“Sherlock?!”

“Coming!” The response was terse, but John knew he wasn’t going to be holding the creepy thing much longer. Before he stumbled into the shop on that fateful day, John had truly thought he would become a doctor, maybe even go into the army. People told him all the time how brave he was, and he guessed it was true. After all, he faced many fearsome things without so much as a peep. But this bat…

“He just makes me uncomfortable, all right?” he had told Sherlock once. “His eyes are always so wide and I know he’s thinking about taking a great big bite out of me. It’s enough to make anyone skittish.”

“Are you afraid he’ll turn you if he does?” Sherlock had asked, and John had laughed his little “Haha-That’s-So-Not-Actually-Funny” chuckle and wrestled Sherlock back into bed.

Once his master returned, John gave a sigh of relief.

“Here’s the potion,” Sherlock said and produced a tiny eyedropper.

“Just take him from me, please.”

“You do it.”

“What? Sherlock, no. I’ve held him long enough!”

“Come on, John––”

“No, I… No! Why can’t you do it?”

Sherlock paused and closed his long fingers over the eyedropper. “Because. If I made a mistake, I’d never forgive myself.”

John blinked and stared back at Sherlock, ignoring the next little cough that came from Thomas. “What?”

“I’m sure I will manage, but I’d prefer not to.” Sherlock turned toward the wall and seemed to be gazing at the dusty books that always lined the shelves. “You see, I’ve a very steady hand, in all experimental and magick-related activities, of course. But with something like this, emotions have the potential of getting the better of me.”

John glanced down and saw the way Sherlock’s fists clenched and unclenched again and again. It surprised him because he’d never seen Sherlock so affected. Well… not in a long time anyway.

“When Morgana was a young owl, she became very sick. Another witch put a curse on her.”

“That’s awful!”

“It was. I nursed her back to health, but my fear of not administering proper treatment crippled me. I remembered thinking that I didn’t know… what I would do without her.”

John took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, you must have done a fine job. She’s in perfect health and has been as long as I’ve known her.”

“I… I passed the task to Loki.” He finally turned to look back at John. “I was too afraid I might make a fatal mistake and lose Morgana forever.”

John glanced down at Thomas again and considered the red, staring eyes, the little curve of the mouth that housed sharp teeth before its gaping maw, the teeny claws that often grabbed his jumpers and unraveled the sleeves before he could pull away. He considered Thomas’ role in the shop and in Sherlock’s heart.

“C’mere,” he murmured. “We’ll do it together.”

Sherlock moved to be closer to them, and John wrapped his fingers around the dropper. “O…kay, now put your hand over mind. It’s delicate, this potion?”

“Very.”

“Okay. Let me know when to squeeze and when to stop. And don’t worry. He’ll be right as rain in no time.”

Sherlock seemed to concentrate harder than John had ever seen before, and he marveled at the pains his master took. Sometimes, he fancied Sherlock to be lacking in no area of knowledge, but he’d known for a long time there were things the old witch just left out of his general repertoire. He didn’t expect this to be one of them, let alone for the reason Sherlock gave. It made his heart full and his regard for Sherlock somehow even higher.

No one cared to the extent that his Sherlock cared, even if he didn’t want others to know it.

John felt a soft squeeze on his hand and, keeping it steady, released one bead of the potion from the eyedropper into Thomas’ barely open mouth.

“Just four more,” Sherlock whispered and squeezed his hand again.

  
Two. Three. Thomas sneezed after the third, and John was careful to move aside the dropper. With his thumb, he reached up at brushed the fuzz on top of Thomas’ head, whispering soothingly, “No worries, mate. Almost there.” Sherlock watched him, a soft feeling curling up inside him and making him smile in spite of his fears.

Four. They hesitated before the final squeeze. Thomas coughed and stuck out his tiny tongue for the last drop.

“He’s smarter than he looks,” John said and Sherlock laughed. He gave John’s hand one more squeeze, and John released the last drop into Thomas’ open mouth. The little bat stuck out his tongue once more and opened his mouth for another drop.

“That’s all,” said Sherlock, and Thomas coughed but without gusto.

“No, we know you’re better now. I don’t care how much you like the fruit flavors I mixed in.”

John laughed. He hardly realized he was holding Thomas anymore and suddenly thought of O, of losing him, and of Opie too. He glanced at Sherlock and was unable to fathom the depths of sadness he felt in his heart at even the thought of losing him.

“Ah, now. None of that,” Sherlock said. John smiled and glanced down at Thomas.

“He seems better already, doesn’t he?”

“He does.” Sherlock let the silence settle in again before continuing. “But something you were thinking earlier gave me pause. I want you to know… I brought you both into this house, and now, it’s as much either of yours as it is mine.”

“Well, I know how I got here,” teased John. “What’s his story?”

“I found him at the park, friendless and alone. But still he looked at me with nothing but optimism. And I felt it in that moment that he had much to teach me.”

John laughed. “I can see that.”

“Well, then,” Sherlock said with a relieved sigh, “you’ve done your duty. If you like, I can sit up with him and you can move along to bed.”

“That’s okay,” murmured John and held Thomas a little closer. “I’m not really afraid of him now. I guess… I guess it’s what you said about this place being as much his as it is mine or yours.” He smiled at Sherlock, the boyish grin Sherlock loved so, which always reminded him of the very first time John smiled at him as a young boy of seventeen.

“You’ve made a lovely home for us, Sherlock.”

“It is a home because we share it, John.”

John nodded. “Yeah. All of us.” And he turned his gaze back to the bat in his hand who was as real to him now as he was to himself, who represented a part of Sherlock that mattered immensely to him, and who, despite being initially disquieting to John who was very rarely disquieted, belonged here just as much as he did. Who had chosen the shop and Sherlock and the life they all shared, just as John had.

**Author's Note:**

> “Come on up to the house  
> Come on up to the house  
> The world is not my home  
> I’m just a-passin’ through  
> Come on up to the house”  
> –“Come On Up to the House” by Tom Waits


End file.
